12 A Crafty Plan
A Crafty Plan
‘ W alk through that with full force and tell me if it hurts,’ I said, pointing to the mass of kaleeras we’d just hung in the changing room doorway.
Saurav looked at me like I had asked him to jump off a cliff. When I didn’t budge, he sighed.
‘Come on, is this really necessary?’ he asked, turning to his girlfriend for support.
It wasn’t. I just wanted to mess with him a little. He had been disappointing my friend for quite some time now, and I wanted a tiny payback.
V just shrugged and said, ‘It won’t kill you, baby.’
It had been my idea to invite Saurav to our late-night interior decoration sessions, hoping that doing up a bridal boutique would help get his head out of his ass.
He’d promised Vrinda he would propose when the time was right.
That had been two years ago. It’s not like he didn’t want to marry her – he’d made it perfectly clear that V was the girl he wanted to spend his life with.
And yet, he eluded the topic every time she brought it up by sweet-talking some nonsense into her.
The worst bit was he refused to give her a timeline to work with.
He could pop down on one knee tomorrow for all we knew, or fifteen years later.
Two days ago, he’d been cooperative while helping out with the boutique, if not enthusiastic. Tonight, he was plain grumpy.
‘Fine,’ he grunted, throwing me an ungracious look.
The kaleeras, which V had painstakingly sourced after a long day spent in the markets of Old Delhi, were to act as curtains for the changing room. We couldn’t find somebody to customise them, so we’d spent the previous night linking them together to achieve the desired length.
Saurav braced himself for impact, took a small run-up from a few feet away and dove into the sheet of jewellery curtains. He emerged a few seconds later, rubbing his forehead lightly. His murderous look was fixed on me.
‘I guess we’ll have to tell the customers not to do that, then,’ I said, a giggle threatening to burst out.
But V beat me to it as she threw her head back and guffawed. I joined in. Saurav didn’t.
‘You guys are evil,’ he said, but his tone was warmer now that V had bracketed herself into my little joke.
I got up to give him a friendly pat on the back.
‘Now that that’s out of the way, will you tell us what this big idea is all about?’ V asked.
She was seated cross-legged on the floor, next to the sofa that had been delivered earlier this evening, still covered with cardboard and plastic sheets. We had spent three nights working at the boutique, without so much as a word from me about where this was going.
‘Don’t worry about that. Your mum will love it,’ I said. ‘Everyone will.’
The conviction I had on the outside wasn’t particularly mirrored on the inside. But I refused to let the voice of doubt drown out my gut instinct. This would work. This had to work.
‘Yeah but why can’t you tell me?’ V pouted in the way she did when things weren’t going her way.
‘Why can’t you trust me?’ My voice was low, my right eyebrow raised.
Saurav looked from her to me as the silence dragged out, as if he was watching a tennis match.
‘All right,’ she finally said, holding her hands up, ‘what’s next?’
I pointed to the wallpaper rolls arranged vertically in the corner and said, ‘Let’s get those up.’
From the corner of my eye, I saw Saurav glancing at his watch.
I knew it was well past midnight. I wondered if he’d ask to be released from his shift, but he just exhaled and started walking towards the wallpaper rolls.
Stifling a yawn, I got up to help him. These after-office sessions at the boutique were taking a toll on my body, but I didn’t care.
If I wanted to make this project work, I had to throw myself into it, which meant finding time for it every day and not just on the weekends.
Besides, I knew I only had until Sunday to give to V’s boutique.
The four-day-long wedding celebrations for Best Man would begin next week, and I couldn’t afford to be distracted then.
We worked late into the night, climbing over each other to get the wallpaper in place. That’s how I found myself dozing off at the office the next morning. I awoke to the sound of someone clearing their throat.
I jerked my head up from the desk, and saw Aadar leaning over my cubicle wall.
‘What … are you doing here?’ I asked, trying to shake the cloud of sleep from my brain.
More importantly, how long had he been standing there?
‘You’ve got a little …’ he said, pointing first to my face and then to his own mouth.
I turned bright red, wiping the thin line of drool from my bottom lip. When I looked down at my desk, I saw that more saliva had collected on the spot I’d rested my head on.
I quickly placed a tissue on it and painfully watched as it turned transparent with the moisture.
When I looked up, Aadar was watching me intently, trying not to laugh. But he didn’t prolong my embarrassment further.
‘We’ve got a meeting scheduled, remember?’ he asked.
‘To discuss the bar menu with the bride and groom, right,’ I said, as some electricity finally reached my brain.
‘Are they here?’ he asked, looking around the office.
‘I’m sure not. They’re always an hour late.’
‘And you couldn’t have told me that? I had to leave an hour in advance to beat the traffic,’ he said, his hands on his hips.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘it slipped my mind.’
It genuinely had. The long days at work and late nights at the boutique had exhausted both my body and mind. I had done zero preparation for this meeting, but I knew it wasn’t an important one. I was merely there as a mediator – the inputs had to come from Aadar and the happy couple.
‘So what do we do now?’ he asked, checking the time on his phone’s home screen.
It was 12:45 p.m.
‘We get coffee,’ I said, pushing my chair back to stand up.
Instead of taking him to the pantry, I led him downstairs.
We had time for proper coffee, not the astringent liquid we got from the coffee machines at work.
I was heading towards the coffee shop across the road when I noticed Aadar wasn’t following me.
I waited for him to join me, but instead, he began walking to his left.
‘Are you coming?’ I called out.
He didn’t say anything, just waved at me to come over.
‘What now?’ I mumbled under my breath before turning around to walk towards him.
He was now standing in front of a roadside tea stall that I knew had been on this street for years, and yet I had never fully acknowledged it, let alone tried to drink from it.
In fact, I’d never seen anyone from my office enjoying a cup of tea at this tapri.
A few people from the editorial team bought cigarettes from this guy, but even they’d go back up to the office balcony to smoke.
‘Chai?’ Aadar asked.
‘Um, you can get tea there,’ I said, pointing to our initial choice of coffee shop.
‘I’m sure, but it won’t be as good,’ he said, then asked me again, ‘so, chai for you?’
My eyes darted along the street, scanning for familiar faces.
‘What, are you afraid someone will see you standing here?’
‘Of course not.’
I totally was.
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure the fancy folks at TMJ won’t demote you for enjoying an innocent cup of chai at the local tea stall,’ he said, sounding amused.
I wouldn’t put my money on it, I thought.
Tentatively, I extended my hand to take the glass cup he was holding out for me.
‘Cheers,’ he said, clinking his cup against mine.
The impact made some of the tea spill out, and I winced as the hot liquid went down my fingers.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said.
‘Can you ask him for a tissue?’ I asked, holding the dripping cup away from my clothes.
He chuckled. ‘It’s not a Starbucks, madam.’
I turned to look at him, slightly annoyed. ‘A piece of newspaper? A leaf? Anything to prevent me from wiping my hands on your crisp white shirt?’
He took a step back, mouthing, ‘Whoa.’
Then, he retrieved a handkerchief from his left pocket and offered it to me.
As I took the soft piece of cloth from him, a small smile inadvertently found its way onto my face. I placed the tea cup on the stone bench next to the stall and wiped my hands. Just as I returned the handkerchief, my phone rang.
‘Hey, you,’ Madhav’s warm voice spilled over from the other side.
‘Oh, hey,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
‘I was just about to leave from the office. I’ll see you in around 30?’ he asked.
‘Huh?’
I pulled the phone from my ear to look at the time. It was 1:15 p.m. Shit. I’d completely forgotten I’d asked him to –
‘Come over for lunch, right?’
I was conscious of Aadar’s eyes on me as I spoke into the phone, ‘Shit, man. An important client is dropping by for an impromptu meeting. I don’t think I’ll make it out in time.’
‘Oh.’ The exclamation was followed by a few seconds of silence. ‘I’d moved quite a few things around for this.’
He sounded disappointed, even a tad bit accusatory. I felt guilty.
‘I’m really sorry. It just came up,’ I offered sincerely.
‘No, it’s all right.’ The warmth was back in his tone as he said, ‘I do want to see you soon, though.’
I turned around so Aadar couldn’t watch my expression as I said, ‘Me too. I promise I’ll hit you up soon.’
When I disconnected the call, I half expected him to ask me who I’d been speaking with. I knew he was perceptive enough to know that it hadn’t been a professional phone call.
Instead, he pointed at the black Audi A3 that had pulled up in front of my office.
‘That them?’ he asked.
I nodded just as Harsh and Deepti spilled out of the backseat.
Aadar handed the shopkeeper a twenty-rupee note and deposited our cups inside a large pan. We jogged our way back to the entrance of my office building, just in time to catch the same elevator as our guests.
‘Oh, hey,’ Deepti said when she saw me.
I greeted them both and introduced them to Aadar, who had communicated with them several times over email but had never met them in person.